The impact of double skin facades on thermal comfort in public buildings in Constantine, Algeria

In recent years, and in order to obtain energy-efficient buildings, double-skin facades have been used by builders as an alternative to reduce energy consumption, mainly in public buildings. In Algeria, double skin facades have become very popular and widely used especially for their aesthetic value. In this work, we show the role of the DSF to optimize the thermal comfort in public buildings and the contribution of the types of building materials in the optimization. For this, we studied three types of public buildings (of a cultural nature) in Constantine, a city in the North-East of Algeria, characterized by a semi-arid climate. All of these buildings had double skin façade and were designed and built differently in terms of construction technique and choice of construction materials. This research is focused on the comparative study of the (03) three public buildings and their respective temperature status, carried out by in-situ measurements (indoor and outdoor) in two extreme periods (under-heating period in winter, and overheating period in summer) during the day. The results of this work show that the DSF improves thermal comfort by increasing the difference in temperature between the interior and the exterior, up to 10°C in winter and up to 24°C in summer, and that the building materials constituting the DSF and the orientation influence its thermal performance.